The Tales from the Middle of Town

“A truly wonderful show…an experience our children will never forget” – Sally Hudson, Middleton Primary School. There is a shop – a big shop – in the middle of a busy shopping centre. But this shop doesn’t sell toys, or food, or mobile telephones – this shop sells stories. Tales From the Middle of the Town takes you on a magical shopping trip with vampire shopkeepers, moody book-shop customers and Lilly’s first day at her glasses shop

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During the summer of 2009, NIE began holding storytelling workshops in schools in and around Peterborough, gathering over 1000 stories in the year leading up to the opening of the show. These stories were then whittled down, rehearsed and interwoven to make

Tales from the Middle of Town. In October 2010, NIE joined with Eastern Angles to take over a large disused shop unit in the town centre, where we performed the show for 2 weeks, playing to over 1000 people. The completed show premiered on Wednesday 6 October 2011 at The Queensgate shopping centre in Peterborough.

This project is part of NIE’s long-term partnership with the city of Peterborough. In 2009 we used this model of working for a show, Das Schiff and in 2012 it formed the basis for our co-production with The Unicorn Theatre in London, Tales from the River Thames.